Don't Get Held Hostage to Bad Employees

My company, Proteus International, focuses on leader readiness. A big part of that involves offering our clients skills for being better managers and leaders. I get enormous satisfaction from providing this support to people - I believe it's helpful to them, their employees and their companies.

A few issues come up again and again, over the years, both in our executive coaching practice and in our training programs. One of the most common: managers not firing people who need to be fired.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not a slash and burn kind of manager, and I'm not suggesting that you be one, either. (Here's a really good article by Jay Goltz about why firing people who aren't performing isn't 'cutthroat' or mean.) I'm talking about situations where someone is a marginal (or even less than marginal) performer for months or years on end, and the manager not only doesn't let the person go, but gets completely caught up in the saga of that employee. The manager spends a disproportionate amount of time thinking about how to handle him or her; has way too many conversations with the person or with other people about the person regarding the problems this person is causing; sometimes even ends up figuring out how to shift or re-allocate work to make up for this person's poor work habits or lack of skill.

Sound familiar?

And when I talk to people - especially people I'm coaching - about the situation, I often get some version of "HR won't let me fire them," or "our company makes it impossible to fire somebody."

Really?

When I dig into the situation a bit, what often turns out to be the case is that HR won't "let" him or her fire the person because the manager has given the person a great performance review for the past X years (thinking a poor review would be 'demotivating'), and has never documented any of the bad stuff this person has done.

OK. If you've got a person like this, who's not doing his or her job and/or is making life a living hell for others in the organization, stop the madness! Here's what to do about it:

1. Get clear about what you expect. Before you start trying to improve or remove your poor employee, make sure you know what success would look like. Create a clear picture in your own mind of the behavior you need to see from this person. For instance, don't just say 'a better attitude,' get specific about what that would look like. Showing up on time? Meeting deadlines? Stopping the daily sarcastic comments about other people and the company?

2. Make agreements. Based on your clarity, make agreements with the person about what he or she needs to do in order to succeed in their job. And I don't mean just telling them what to do - I mean getting an agreement from them. E.g., "Joe, meeting deadlines on projects you commit to is a condition of your success in this job. Can you commit to doing that?" And if the person is evasive ("Well, I could do it if the timeframes were realistic" or "it's hard when others don't do their part," etc.), you can summarize their concern, and then repeat your expectation: "When you do commit to a deadline, though, you need to keep it. Is that a reasonable expectation?"

If the person refuses to agree to doing things that are an expected element of his or her job, you can start the journey toward firing right here: get HR involved, document the conversation, and find out what you need to do next.

3. Give feedback. If the person does agree, stay focused on their behavior. If they keep the agreement - awesome. Acknowledge and reinforce the behaviors by giving them positive feedback about it Maybe the actual problem was just lack of clarity. However, if the agreed-upon performance doesn't happen, or happens for awhile then starts to drift, you need to let the person know. Here's an approach we recommend: start by asking the person what's up: "Joe, we talked about meeting deadlines. How do you think it's going?" (If he starts defending himself, or blaming others, just listen. It's useful to know what's going on in his head - and listening to him will likely reduce his defensiveness.) Then give him the feedback: build on what he says, telling him what you see happening, and ask how he plans to get it back on track. "From your point of view, there's not much you could have done differently to meet those last two deadlines. I see it differently. You could have come to me when things started to slip, or you could have sorted it out with Julie. I'm still expecting you to meet deadlines you commit to. So what can you do going forward to make that happen?" (And document this conversation!)